TECHING AND LEARNING VOCABULARY Without grammar, little can be conveyed; without vocabulary, nothing can be conveyed (Nation,

1990)

How many words does a second language learner need? There are two ways of answering this question. One way is to look at the vocabulary of native speakers of English and consider that as a goal for second language learners. The other way is to look at the results of frequency counts and the practical experience of second language teachers and researchers and decide how much vocabulary is needed for particular activities. The vocabulary size of native speakers of English is about 20,000 words for undergraduate students, although statistics may vary enormously from one person to another. An English student attaining this endeavour, considering that first language learners add between 1,000 and 2,000 words per year to their vocabulary, may need about 15 to 20 years time. It is therefore convenient to take a look at the second choice: frequency counts of vocabulary, which can be divided in the following categories: high-frequency words, academic vocabulary, technical vocabulary, and low-frequency words. High-frequency words account for 87 percent of the words in a text, meaning that they allow a learner to understand 87 percent of a text, they deserve considerable time and attention from both: teacher and learners, they cover a lot of text and will be met often, they have a wide range and any time spent on them will be repaid. Academic vocabulary accounts for 8 percent of the words in a text, they are useful for students in upper secondary school, university, and technical institutes; they, in combination with the 2000 headwords allow a learner to understand 95 percent of a text. They differ from technical words in that they are common in most kinds of technical writing, they should be the goal after the first 2000 high-frequency words are mastered. Technical vocabulary accounts for only 3 percent of the words in a text, they are related to the subject area only, they are worth studying only if the learner continuous studying in this are, they are worth learning by anyone intending to specialize in that subject area. Low-frequency words account for only 2 percent of the words in a text, they are not likely to appear again in the same text and therefore they are not worth spending time on them, it is more important to teach learners strategies like guessing from context or using word parts, two thirds of them come from French, Latin, or Greek; meaning that they can be broken in two or more parts in order to understand them better. Wests General Service List (GSL) of English Words (1953) provide a useful guide to frequency counts, in particular high-frequency words. It can be easily found on the internet. There is a wide variety of ways for dealing with vocabulary, it obviously depend of the approach chosen by the teacher, there are two approaches to dealing with vocabulary:

indirect and direct. In the former, learners attention is not focused on vocabulary, but on the message; according to Krashen, considerable vocabulary learning is possible if there is a low amount of unknown words. In the latter, learners do activities and exercises that focus their attention on vocabulary. What features make learning a word difficult? The learning burden of a word is the amount of effort needed to learn and remember it. This depends on three things: 1) the learners previous experience of L2 and L1; 2) the way in which the word is learnt or taught; and 3) the intrinsic difficulty of the word. What to do when learners do not have enough vocabulary to read a text? Some students will have less than 3,000 headwords, increasing a learners vocabulary does not mean his reading skills will better (it also depends on background and previous reading experience). Such increase must be followed by opportunities to put this vocabulary to use. Students can learn vocabulary by direct study and by reading. The teacher can analyze a text and classify the words according to the type of words there are in the text, he can decide to approach this vocabulary using direct or indirect approaches. Here, the teacher can choose between a wide variety of techniques to explain and present vocabulary: simplified reading, vocabulary exercises, guessing from context, using word parts, spending time on words (spoken form, written form, grammar, collocation, frequency and appropriateness, concept, and association), giving the meaning quickly, ignoring unknown words, pre-teaching vocabulary, glossing, referring to a dictionary, reviewing words met in context, etc. Word count: 757 words